Fic: Chaos Theory (Robin Hood)

[keep_counting]

Title:  Chaos Theory
Characters/Pairings: Marian/Robin, eventual Marian/Guy, Allan, Djaq, Much, Vaisey 
Rating: PG13
Warnings: Bad language, cracky and weird content, Future!Fic in where people are drunk and have messed up lives.  
Genre: Romance/Hurt-Comfort
Word-count:  2,483
Disclaimer: If I owned the show, it would be as bad as this fic!
A/N: Based on a dream where I had an argument with Lady Marian over the phone. Not beta'ed and perhaps the weirdest thing I have ever written. It's crack with a smear of angst and... some more crack
Summary:  'It apparantly hadn't worked, since the all-mighty Guy Gisbourne hadn't even flinched in the face of her anger. Bastard.'


 

”Is there a problem, miss…?” He looks like he doesn’t care if there is. He’s sitting there, boots on the table, leather-jacket slung over the back of his chair, looking for all he’s worth like he owns half the company.

Which, okay, he sort of does.

“Fitzwalter,” She grits out, internally imagining that she takes up the paperweight and bangs it against that big head of his. “Marian Fitzwalter.”

“Well, is there?”

“The assistant you’ve assigned me with – Allan Dale… he’s not doing his job,” She says it out in a rush, not that she’s scared, oh no, it would take more than her boss and his well-shaped (okay, very well-shaped) legs to throw her off course, and she knows she’s too damn good at her job to get fired, but god, how those piercing blue eyes could stare, like they were stripping off every layer of your soul and not liking what they found.

“Sir,” She adds as an afterthought. To be polite. Not ‘cause he makes her uneasy. Oh no.

The corner of his mouth quirks and she wonders, not for the first time, if it is even possible for him to actually smile.

“How exactly does he fail to do his job, miss?” He leaves out her name on purpose. The bastard. (she’s not even sure why this is bothering her)

Ah. He asked her a question. How exactly did Allan Dale fail to do his job properly? Oh, let me count the ways…

Only, she hadn’t actually prepared for that sort of questions. She’d, apparently, been naïve and arrogant enough to think that anything she said would be taken at face-value. She wouldn’t even have complained about it – not yet, at least – but this morning had just been the final straw and she’d stormed in here without really thinking about it, looking for all intents and purposes like she was ready to commit murder.
It apparently hadn’t worked, since the all-mighty Guy of Gisbourne hadn’t even flinched in the face of her anger. Bastard.

“Well, he’s… umm… lazing around, sir. He barely gets reports in in time, he’s unreliable in a crisis and, to be frank, he harasses the female staff. Well, all of the staff, really. Especially Djaq.” And Much. She just really hoped there wasn’t the same intention behind it.

“Okay,” Gisbourne said, hands folded across his torso, still looking for all the world like he didn’t even properly see her in the room. “That’s unfortunate, but unless Djaq wants to sue, nothing really we can do about it.”

Marian was sure that standing with your mouth hanging open looked much undignified. Especially in front of your boss. But she really couldn’t help it.

“You mean… you’re not… you’re not going to fire him? Transfer him? A stern talking to?” A spanking at least?

Was that amusement glittering in those cold crystals he had for eyes? Dear lord, better not make him laugh. The world might implode.

“Allan has been my personal assistant for many years,” Gisbourne said and Marian had all of three seconds to kick herself, wonder why she didn’t know of this and contemplating whether or not jumping out the window right now and run for it would be a good move. Probably not, considering they were on the seventh floor. “I have it on personal account that he is extremely reliable, if a bit of a flirt.”

A bit of a flirt? Her boyfriend was a bit of a flirt. Allan was out of control.

Really, nothing she could do about it. Apparently.

“Alright then, sir,” Her teeth are grinding so hard together it’s a wonder they don’t crack and the smile she forces out must make her look like a hyena – did he actually look a bit scared there? Oh, small victories – but she manages it, says a goodbye and marches out of the room. If the door slams a bit harshly behind her, it’s certainly not her fault. The wind, really.

At least, this day’ll get better when she’s home. It always does.

oOo

 
It doesn’t.

“What do you mean, signed up for Afghanistan? Are you mental?”

There was a deep, scratching sound from his end, then a low thud and he was back, Robin’s voice filling her ears like some distant soundtrack that is swiftly cut off, just as you were beginning to enjoy the song.

“No, not mental. Look, this is my decision, ‘kay? I’m not asking you to wait or anything,”

“Damn right, I won’t wait while you swagger off and get yourself bloody killed in some distant country, what the hell do you think?”
“Oi! Stop the swearing! And calm down!”

“I will not calm down!”

“Yes you will!”

“No I… You’re the one leaving, stop bloody telling me what to do!”

“Then stop swearing!”

“You are not my mother!” And she hangs up.

Oh, so dignified. ‘Not my mother’. Classic. Graceful. Horrible.

Not her mother, and certainly not her boyfriend anymore. The prick. The arrogant git. Bastard, idiot, wanker, abandoner.
What the hell did he think he was doing? Just leaving – going to war, and telling her over the phone?

Yes, because you were real mature there, understanding and winning him over with good arguments!

“Oh shut it,” She hisses, realizes that she’s talking to herself and hurriedly goes to the kitchen to find something alcoholic and hopefully very brain-cell killing. She needs that. Good, proper hangover.

It isn’t until morning that she realizes it was Thursday and the hangover comes on a Friday – and she has work on a Friday.

The shrill tone of her phone is what wakes her and its Allan’s voice reaching her on the other end, sounding somewhat concerned and a little teasing and she yells at him to go do something anatomically impossible with a doorknob before hanging up.

Gisbourne calls next and she thinks, through the foggy haze that is her brain that he almost sounds worried and she snickers out loud, and oh, now he sounds angry and she quickly quits her job before he can fire her.

Oh. Wait. What?

oOo

 
She picks him -  well them, seeing as Much thought it would be a brilliant idea to go with him and die together - up at the airport, her hair longer and darker and hands wringing around each other, her clothes feeling too hot and uncomfortable and wondering if he looks the same.

He does, Robin’s hundred Watt-grin still in place, but he also looks older and she knows she does too. He kisses her and it feels different, almost wrong somehow, but that’s alright, because she’d been sort of mean the last time they spoke and they are technically broken up and…

And it’s been five years.

That’s alright though, because the years have been alright even without him, even if Djaq and Will are all happy and silly and in love, and John got divorced and she moved on to work for an even bigger prick than before, who then turned out to be Gisbourne’s former boss, and oh, how she’d fantasized about sticking the lapels of Mr. Vaisey’s coat on fire and, hey, she’s sort of proud that she hasn’t – someone else most likely will one day, because, let’s realize, the git has it coming.

“Have you been seeing anyone?” Robin asks, and his eyes are cold and distant and somewhat hopeful and she has no idea if she would be doing them a favor if she said no.

When in doubt, lie your ass off.

“Yeah, I’m…. ummm, seeing someone. Not very serious though,” She says and his face drops for only a nano-second and she thinks they can move on now. Because it’s embarrassing that he was the one who left, but she’s been as unable to move on, when she rightfully should have done so.

Damn, but she can be so stupid sometimes. And proud. When, really, looking back at a messy life with various career-changes and a sick father and that boyfriend that definitely got away, not so much to be proud of really.

It’s a depressing thought, but hey, at least she still has her hands and her spleen and they’re really helpful when you’re planning to get drunk later tonight.

And she does, or at least half-way, sitting alone in a bar and oh god how depressing is her life? – and wondering if maybe, she really should start getting a grip on herself.

And she will. Starting tomorrow.

“Marian?” His voice crashes over her from behind and she grits her teeth and controls her temper, swinging – only swaying slightly, the floor is a bit crooked after all, not the alcohol’s fault – and smiles at her former boss.

“Satan,” She greets back and the part of her brain that is normally overruled by common sense but is brought gloriously alive by the dulling powers of alcohol is busy drooling over how good he looks in that jacket and the fact that his hair looks sort of soft. Great, she’s having girly fantasies about the biggest idiot in the universe. Okay, biggest idiot after Vaisey. And Robin. And Allan. And maybe also herself, possibly.

His lips quirks in that not-quite smile and she realizes with a pang that she’s misses that, missed pissing him off and him making her blood boil – argh, no, decidedly not in that way! Bad Marian, bad! – and thinking that at least there’s another person out there whose even worse than her at doing the right thing.

The right thing being, in his case, treating people nicely and in her case being actually getting a hold on this fast-forwarding she calls a life.

“How’ve you been?” He asks and sounds interested. Dear god.

“Fine. You?” She asks out of reflex – she’s not interested! – and takes a huge gulp of her drink, liking the fact that she can hold that responsible for whatever stupid thing she’s probably bound to do later. Only, it was sort of her decision to drink it. Logic really was the bane of her existence.

“Also… good,” He says, sounding like the word is both amusing and loathsome to him. How he manages to do that is beyond her, but he’ll have to teach her that someday.

“Oh, I will. If you’d like,” Gisbourne really smiles this time, and she realizes a bit belatedly that she’s spoken out loud.

“I just broke up with my boyfriend. Or, I don’t know actually. What do you do when you haven’t seen each other for five years and he comes home from this war and is sort of a prick but also good-looking?”

She’s gonna stop drinking after tonight.

Gisbourne looks completely floored, sort of like she’d just declared she was a transvestite with a morally wrong interest in hamsters and that she was about to snog him.

Huh. Maybe he’d like the snogging bit.

Ugh, brain. Shut up.

“Are you drunk?” He asks and laughs a little. “No, sorry, of course not. Perfect Marian, with her perfect career and perfect life. Wouldn’t know fun if it bit you in the…”

“Oi!” She jumps up from her chair, not caring that he’s hovering a few – okay, several, inches over her, one shaking finger pointed at his face and her eyes narrowed. “I will have you now, mister, that my life bites. It sucks, right about now, and it has for a long time. Hence the drinking. And transvestites.”

Luckily he doesn’t hear, or wisely decides to ignore the last comment: instead he just blinks, slowly, dark lashes casting shadows against his pale cheeks and she thinks that, for a really manly hunk of man, he has extremely pretty eyes. They’re an almost unnatural shade of blue, like how the sea looks underneath an incasing of ice. Not that she’s ever actually seen that, but she can imagine.

He’s still smiling at her, a little condescending this time.

“Your life isn’t miserable,”

She pouts. She doesn’t think she’s ever pouted before. “Yes, it is.” She sobers, just a tad, just enough to actually gain a bit of composure, bring back that last spark of pride. “And that’s sort of okay, you know.”

He’s about to answer her, but is rather rudely interrupted by her throwing up on the floor.

Yes. She’s gonna stop drinking after tonight.

oOo

 
“You cannot be serious,” She says into her phone the next day, pillows and blankets propped up against and around her, the TV making a distant noise in the background. It’s Sunday and she’s oh so tired, and oh so embarrassed.

“But I am,” Guy says, and she wonders when the skies turned purple and the world started rotating backwards.

“You’re actually offering me my old job back?”

“Yes. You were good at it,”

“But seriously? After I just quit like that?”

“Yes, quit and called me… what was it? ‘A bloody downright bastard with an arse instead of a face and the brains of monkey dung’?”

She's blushing. She never blushes. “Um, yeah, sorry about that. I’ve got a bit of a bad mouth sometimes,”

He laughs and nothing explodes or anything and she thinks it’s actually a rather nice sound.

“But you can have your job back. We need good people back in the company and, to say the truth, Allan is just lazing around all day,”

It’s her turn to laugh and it feels wonderful and free, but her head is still pounding, her mind still reeling from all the new information.

“You must be barking,”

“Hey, that’s your boss you’re talking to!”

“No, it’s not,” she says in a sing-song voice and then sobers. “I can’t take the job, Gisbour… Guy.” It’s weird, calling him that. It rolls off her tongue like peppermint and something strong. Like the alcohol still burning in her veins.

“I knew you’d say that,” he says right away, surprising her yet again. “Allan is actually doing an alright job. I think he misses you, though. He complains that after Djaq left, there’s nothing good to look at anymore. Well, that’s not exactly how he put it, he was a bit cruder than that…”

“I get the picture,” she says, imagining the other man rolling around the office and checking out every female’s backside. “So why’d you ask?”

There’s silence on the other phone. She thinks he’s going to come up with an elaborate lie, tell her it was a prank or even pull it off as a ‘no reason’, before hanging up and never talking to her again.

She hopes to god he doesn’t do the last one. She’s not completely sure why.

“Maybe I wanted to keep you around,” Guy finally says, and he sounds so unsure and small and warm and safe and she’s not completely sure what the hell is going on, but it makes her feel lighter than she’s ever felt before and she thinks, okay.

Okay.


FIN